Humana agrees to contribute information to PearlDiver's database

Humana ($HUM) has opened up another way for healthcare researchers to access its vault of data. The insurance giant has agreed to add its information to PearlDiver's database, a resource that at the last count contained 1.1 billion HIPAA-compliant patient records.

Over the past decade, Louisville, KY-based Humana has contributed its wealth of data on diagnoses, procedures and medication records to collaborations with the likes of AstraZeneca ($AZN), Eli Lilly ($LLY) and Pfizer ($PFE). The PearlDiver deal is the latest step in this push to extract value from its data. PearlDiver will incorporate the information into its database and allow users to interrogate the resource using its longitudinal mining software, MedCity News reports.

Steve Chick

Part of the attraction of the deal for the collaborators is the ability to look at claims data and information from public sources on the same platform. "This functionality provides the ability to answer real world research questions in real-time, and identify potential treatment patterns and other outcomes research," Steve Chick, market vice president of Humana, said. PearlDiver is pitching the offering at regulators, analysts, medical device executives and other healthcare players.

Anyone interested in understanding a particular healthcare pathway--such as the costs and lengths of stay associated with a procedure--can ask PearlDiver to pull figures from its database. Big Pharma companies are after such information to shape future development plans and help build a case in negotiations with budget holders, leading to deals like the collaborations Humana has struck with Lilly and Pfizer in recent years.

- read MedCity News' article